How Mechanized Street Sweepers Work

If you look at mechanized street sweepers, they somewhat seem too “ordinary”. To the average observer, they only seem to be trucks fitted with brooms that rotate nonstop.

However, mechanized street sweepers are in fact technological marvels underneath their average appearances. There are two main types of sweepers: the wet and dry ones. Wet sweepers are equipped with large water tanks and sprayers intended to loosen caked dirt, while the dry variants sport specialized brooms.

Wet sweepers are among the most common. They work by spraying water onto the street’s surface to minimize flying dust particles, with spinning brushes on the side scrubbing the dirt off of streets and gutters. The debris these brushes clear off is swept onto a conveyor belt underneath the vehicle, which then leads to a compartment where the dirt is stored. At times, brushes are out of the question; some sweepers use vacuum instead to suck the debris right into the container.

Once the debris is inside the compartment, it is typically shaken to separate the debris particles. After the shaking process, the rubbish is then sent into a filtering system where a series of fans, filters, and hoppers extract the dust from the dirty air inside. The vehicle then traps the dirty air and cleans it for expulsion back into the environment.